Hat tip: South County Truth Spot
By Susan E. Sagarra
St. Louis County’s property tax reassessment system has been an endless source of frustration, aggravation and anger for homeowners, business owners and politicians for several years. The taxpayers have been and remain livid; some state lawmakers are vowing to find a solution that makes the system fair and equitable for St. Louis County taxpayers.
The Method
First, it is important for homeowners to know that the St. Louis County assessor’s office uses less than half of the properties that have been sold in the county to calculate the value of each and every home in the county. While there are approximately 390,000 residential real estate properties in St. Louis County, the residential assessment that state law requires every two years relies solely on a database of less than half of the actual sales of homes that were recorded. In reality, that means that only 10 percent of all homes built in St. Louis County are used to determine the assessed values.
During the most recent reassessment cycle, the assessor’s office used 86,143 Certificates of Value from homes in 2005 and 2006. The assessor’s office then tossed out 44,459 of those homes for various reasons and used only 41,684 (or about 10 percent) in its computer-generated assessment model to determine the values of all homes in the county.
The assessor’s office did this with a process called “reasons to invalidate” certain properties. In other words, the assessor’s office automatically discarded certain types of property and did not include them in the final analysis of assessed properties, such as: Read more…
0 responses so far ↓
1 William Kelsey // Nov 2, 2007 at 11:03 am
The fact that it is immoral is known to all of us. The fact that it is illegal should be known as well. When we passed the Hancock Amendment, we did it for a very clear reason. We did it because we didn’t want to have any more government “services” shoved down out throats. The fact is there are no more services but rather we are spending a whole lot more for those we already have. Furthermore, the so called “services” that cost so much are diminishing beyond belief. The public educational system, for example, is a disgrace by anybodies standards. All of what we are paying for from the state and county government is hugely overpriced.
I feel we need to get yet another amendment on the ballot which not only plugs all loopholes but absolutely rolls back the rates to where they were in, say, 2000. Of course, people like Dooley are going to whine that it is going to hurt. So what…let it hurt him. He knows,as we all know, that what they are doing is illegal. They did the same thing in California when Prop 13 was passed. They tried to scare the people as much as they could. They will do the same thing here. They will claim that every service that anybody has any use for will be severely cut. Maybe threaten to let criminals go free and other scare tactics. None will offer to get rid of the dead weight.
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